"We're married." Edward pulled himself upright, leaning his back against the bare cupboards that hid his ammunition under the sink. Hardly the most secure of hidey holes, but he was lacking greater options. Anything adulterated in the studio would look suspicious. He cleared his throat, shaking his head and rubbing his eyes with the thick of his palms -- a man awakening from a nightmare.

"Felicia and me, I mean. We're married. So yes, yes, I have someone." Someone he hadn't seen in nearly a year. She went into hiding shortly after he was captured, he had deduced. And given how good she was at covering her tracks, it could take another year yet to find her; last time he had known her coordinates, she was in Paris. Hiding in plain sight, the like. International travel was impossible for imPorts, but Felicia was different. Felicia always had luck on her side.

And Eddie, it seemed, never did nowadays.

"I don't wear my ring," he confessed. To do so was to put a bullet to Felicia's head. Even when Edward was a criminal (a supervillain), the death toll wrought by rings was staggering, undeniable in its heart-wrenching opportunity. Whenever a vigilante's glove ripped and there exposed was that gleaming metal -- it was just another nail in a coffin. A wife's coffin, a husband's coffin. Edward knew how symbols were abused for information.

Edward had lived like that.

"You're lucky I disabled it," he said, his eyes flecking upwards at the smoke detector above them. Such a small, compact kitchen, such a wary detector. "I had to. They had cameras in there, you know."